I've been away for a while but I've been paying attention, particularly to AGW and Finance/Economics/Business articles - saving them when I thought they'd still be relevant when I returned to writing. The AGW stories have stayed current because the only variable is to how many skeptics will be allowed to contribute to the conversation, if one could call it that. So the headline "
Global warming debunked" The Timaru (New Zealand) Herald article of May 19, 2007 by Andrew Swallow caught my eye. Highlights...
Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.
...
Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.
"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."
The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.
However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.
"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.
"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."
...
"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?
"It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said.
The biggest surprise here ie that even in NZ they use the cliche "Salem witch hunt."
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